


Neither Rain Nor Sleet

by The Last Good Name (thelastgoodname)



Series: Regina, Or, Nine Stories [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 20:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13197570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelastgoodname/pseuds/The%20Last%20Good%20Name
Summary: The estate is the perfect place for a young girl on horseback to go exploring, and Regina has always taken advantage of every inch of space and adventure.





	Neither Rain Nor Sleet

It hurt. That’s the only thing she could think: it hurt. It always hurt. Mother said that’s as it should be. When Regina failed, she should feel the pain of it, the agony of failure as well as the agony of punishment. But it shouldn’t hurt this much. Not when it was so pretty otherwise.

 

The water rises.

 

The water rises, and Regina panics. So does Neves, rearing back and kicking and he throws Regina into the creek. The creek that is, every single day until yesterday, a placid, peaceful, babbling place, quiet and welcoming and entirely out of reach of the Hall.

 

And now the creek is rising, and Regina is holding on with the reins, to the saddle, to Neves’s mane, with all her strength, but the creek still rises, she can see the water coming at them, more and more and…

 

Regina lets go.

 

It’s icy, the water. As if it were April and not August, as if the snows were just now starting to melt and the waters hadn’t been basking in the summer sun for months already. Regina shrieks with nothing but air under her, and then grunts when she hits rock. Neves’s hooves pound down onto her, splashing water everywhere and slicing through her hair, through the side of her open jacket, through her pants against her thigh. He neighs, loud and panicked, and desperate. Regina wants to make that sound, too. She, too, is desperate and panicky. And the water is so very cold.

 

Regina inhales as deep as she can, and along with the air comes water. She chokes. Coughs. Splashes and tries to stand, but her leg hurts and Neves is scared and she is shivering so much and can’t think. Can’t think: where did the flood come from? Where was the path home?

 

Her leg is bleeding, bright red against the pounding water, and she thrashes against it, pushing back as she walks upstream, flooding her legs and waist and pulling her sodden clothes down to creek bed. A wave comes by, and she is thrown back again, and Neves is pawing at the side of the creek, but it’s too high for even a tall horse to climb. It shouldn’t be that high, this is a low place to ford the creek, a quiet and calm place with trees where she could have had a picnic. But now there is bare dirt and the water is tearing away the plants and bushes and trees and Neves is thrashing and his front legs scrabble for purchase.

 

Regina braces herself, inhales and pushes against the water again. She has to get to the horse: one step. One step, that’s all she needs. So she takes one step.

 

The rocks underfoot and the gushing water press against her, trying to push her over, but Regina refuses. One step is all she needs, and she will not let the water win. She will not fail Neves.

 

And then, once she’s taken one, another. Just one step. That’s all. That’s all and then she can rest: just one step. Then, with a throbbing leg and shaking so hard she can barely keep herself upright, she takes another step. Just one. And another: one at a time, body aching from fighting the water and her wound, heart aching from Neves’ frantic neighing and falling, the water now up to her chest and pressing against her and trying to shove her downstream and Neves was there, crawling up the bank. A horse should not crawl.

 

A branch crashes into her: not a branch. A log. She can’t breathe and she can’t stand and she can’t swim and the water is so powerful, so strong, so cold. Regina whimpers, calls the horse’s name.

 

Neves’s hind hoof catches onto something, and he propels himself up, on three legs, getting tangled and never stopping. Regina, on her back, tries to right herself but can only watch as the bank, and the horse, drift further and further away. Her bottom hits something—the log? A sandbank?—and she thrashes, throwing her legs desperately under her to catch on something and arrest her descent. First one foot and the water sweeps under her and for an instant, she sways. Sways in the never-ending water and closes her eyes and imagines letting go and not fighting anymore. Her leg wouldn’t hurt, her chest wouldn’t hurt. The horse is fine.

 

She puts the other foot down, fights against the water and the cold and exhaustion, and takes another step.

 

One more.

 

There is a root hanging down the bank, far from where Neves’s hooves caught when he climbed up, and Regina takes it. Tries to take it, but her hands are so cold and her fingers won’t do as she asks. As she commands. There is something there to hold on to, but she can’t grasp it. She can’t, can’t, can’t, and then she hears Neves whinny. The horse calls to her, as she had tried to call to him, and Regina looks up at the grass alongside the creek, at the picnic spot, at salvation. She doesn’t look at the root.

 

Afterward, she can never recall exactly how she pulled herself out of the river, which flooded and destroyed fields and pasture alike, collapsed two houses and washed away dozens of animals.

 

In the end it didn’t matter: she survived.

 

Regina and Neves stayed close to the Hall, now. They were careful, they keep the formal gardens in sight, with their tall, perfectly trimmed trees and achingly straight flower beds. No wild forest for them, not this day. Not in months, since the terrifying experience with the creek. Regina hadn’t been back to the picnic spot since then, and didn’t miss it. Much.

 

So today, they ride carefully down manicured paths, alongside designed hedges and planted orchards and through carefully managed arches, patently false and contained and it makes Regina want to scream. But it’s safer, closer to home. Nothing will go wrong. She won’t die, and neither will her horse.

 

The edges of the hunting forest brush against the orchard, with a low wall separating them. Mother wants to move the orchard to the other side, where it can’t be seen from the large windows in the drawing room, but even she might find moving several acres of mature fruit trees a burden. So the orchard sits where it has always been, and the forest beyond beckons Regina. She looks, and looks, and directs Neves to walk down the lined paths, back and forth and back again. The same few feet in any direction, numbingly boring, but at least they are together, Regina astride her horse and outside and far away from Mother and the stale air inside.

 

Regina is turning Neves once more, to go back again slowly, so slowly, when she hears it—a slight crackle, a snap that is not the sound of wind or branches or anything she knows. It’s a sharp sound, and as she turns, she knows without realizing that she will recognize what she sees: it is the forest, aflame.

 

It’s beautiful.

 

Fire has always drawn Regina, she realizes now. She loves the crack and leap, the uncontrolled movement, the unpredictability. She loves the fire the ways she loves the sun, the way she loves her father, the way she loves riding. It’s pretty, and Regina has always been drawn to pretty things.

 

She’s never seen such a big fire, though, and for a moment it seems like the entire wood is alight. It’s contained, though, to the copse at the far end of the low wall, and for the moment, it’s under control. Regina knows that this might not last, that if the fire were to leap across the next open space, consume more, that everything would be in danger. The orchard, the stables. The Hall. Mother. Daddy.

 

She spurs Neves into the flames. He doesn’t want to, and Regina sympathizes. Every instinct she has screams that walking into flame is something that she should know better than to do, but the Hall is at stake. Lives might be risked, if the fire were to grow any larger. But she can alert the household, and she can open the dam.

 

She can only do one of those things first, though, and the fire is captivating and dangerous and Regina draws closer.

 

The dam has been rebuilt since the last disaster, when the creek flooded. Regina hadn’t realized the raging water destroyed the dam until after she and Neves had limped back to the Hall, bloody and exhausted and soaking wet. From the crest of the hill they could see the dam was gone, and it took with it the upper part of the gardens, part of the road, and most of the storehouses. 

 

But the dam has been restored, as have the gardens, road, and stores. And now Regina must get to the dam and release the water, because if she doesn’t, they will lose even more food, and possibly more homes. The trees are heavy with fruit, bright and welcoming, but so does the fire beckon. She nudges Neves, and together they race up to the dam.

 

It’s the first time Regina has been out of the confines of the gardens in months. She barely notices.

 

The mechanism is complex, but the flow is variable to support the crops, and Daddy was so taken by it that he showed Regina when they first came to the Hall, brought her to the dam day after day to marvel at the display of impressive technology in their new home.

 

She pushes the lever.

 

The water gushes faster than she expected, and louder. For a moment, she’s back in the creek, and obviously so is Neves, as the horse rears and calls and fights for his head. Regina tries to calm him, steady him, whispering, “We’re safe, we’re fine, the water can’t get us,” but it’s clear the horse barely believes her. She can’t blame him; she doesn’t believe herself.

 

But the water does what it should, and flows down the culvert and overflows into the copse. The fire is dampened, hissing angrily and sending licks of flame into the air, seeking out fuel and an escape.

 

Regina sympathizes: the fire wants to be free. She understands that feeling, and something in her pulls to stop the water, to let the flames go unconstrained. Fire has no morals, it only seeks to consume. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. And it is very pretty, dancing amongst the trees.

 

Neves, too, seems more unnerved by the water than by the fire. He dances himself, trying to get away from the rushing cascade pouring out of the reservoir. But Regina knows that fire is destructive, in an abstract way, if not in the very concrete way that she knows that water can destroy, too.

 

And so they watch as the lake empties and the fire sizzles out, leaving only steam and blackened trunks and charred earth.

 


End file.
